"Deleted" is going on here in America with these cops

[Sprite12]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORPk3udApZI

I would be suing the ...Deleted by CalHunter... out of them. All they did was offer to help her get some money!!! Unreal.. What is wrong with these police???

[jeepkid]

Maybe there Ron Paul supporters

[RandyA]

It can be expected! THey trash the wrong place, oh well, the tax payers can pay for it. There have been instances of hitting the wrong place and actually killing some one. They are out of control, ...Deleted by CalHunter... with a badge and a gun. And they do it for near poverty level wages. So the job isn't becuase it pays good! ...Deleted by CalHunter... No excuse! Ever wonder why not a single dept. in the USrandumdrug tests its officers? Not rocket science!

[BigTiny]

This is a bad deal, and it happens more often than you would think. I have executed two warrants myself that have been the wrong place. One was the result of another officer's error when he did the paperwork, and another was the result of a snitch trying to get payback on someone else. I wouldn't make a broad statement about police being out of control, but there are some bad ones out there, and that problem is getting worse, not better. Nearly every department I know of does random tests on it's officers and accelerated testing of those in special units. My department also screened for steroids, since the juice makes people make bad decisions, and i think it was a good idea. I held public trust as a part of my job, so proving myself worthy in small ways like urinating in a small vessel was OK with me. My base salary was not anywhere near poverty level, and my department wasn't the best paying in the world. The job does pay well, but salary is just the beginning, private security details are a good deal and pay anywhere from 30-80 bucks an hour. I also happen to like my butch haircut, thank you, and while I have seen "little man syndrome", its seems to be more prevalent in the general population than in the ranks of police. We used to call them "Tequila Superman".

[CalHunter]

Ditto what BigTiny said. I think judging somebody by their haircut is as silly as judging them because they have tattoos. I may not personally care for tattoos but tattoos don't make a person bad, etc.

Perhaps I'm lucky but after 17 years as a cop in CA, it is extremely rare in this area to serve a search or arrest warrant on the wrong house and when it does happen, the innocent person is always taken care of with whatever needs to be corrected. In CA, you have to be extremely precise in describing the location for a search warrant and write out a full description of the property (not just an address), confirm through good informants or other means that the items are likely to be there and then convince the judge that you should be allowed to conduct such a search. There are a lot of hoops to jump through and they safeguard the process and make it more accurate.

In the video for this topic, that PD should have brought in a decontamination subcontractor to rectify all of the damage done and paid for the lady and her kids to stay at a nearby hotel until the work is finished. All associated expenses should be paid for by the PD and they should make right their wrong.

On another note, I have helped serve several search warrants and have never thrown a person's items around. I treat their property like I would want my property treated out of respect. It's not just a simple matter of respect but also one of efficiency. If you make a mess of the place, it's 10 times harder to conduct a proper search and find any contraband, etc. IMHO, that PD should conduct some search warrant training as to how to do it more efficiently and also how to triple check addresses before onbtaining and serving search warrants.

[vc1111]

I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often than it does. It is probably remarkable mostly because it is rare.

Fighting crime in America is problematic because we have steps in place to avoid these types of errors. I can easily envision how a sense of urgency could feed into the chaos of trying to nail down scumbags who keep themselves beneath the radar at all times.

But yes, the authorities should have immediately taken steps to rectify her situation.

[petasux]

Remember awhile back when they killed that old women while serving a no knock warrant on her house?That was a bad thing and made worse by the fact that they didnt announce thier presence when they forced thier way in.They shot her while she thought she was defending her home and that IMO was a large scale screw up by the police and not justifiable.

This time nobody was inside, as bad as it looks nobody was hurt.Getting the wrong address and trashing the place might have been a serious error but it could happen, at least she knew they were there beforehand.Mistakes happen in evey field.

The error with the warrant being what it was they didnt handle the aftermath very well, that is what people see the most pissed off about and rightfully so.They trashed her apartment, why not send in a clean up crew to fix it in a timely manner, she has {I believe} 2 kids to take care of.

[CalHunter]

VC, fighting crime in America is problematic because the suspects get all of the same rights as the rest of us. I wouldn't have it any other way but I also recognize that it does make fighting crime harder.

I would offer an educated guess that the reason serving a warrant at the wrong house is rare is because normally attorneys review a search warrant before it is submitted to the judge and make sure everything looks right. Then the judge reviews it and makes sure everything is right and he/she can feel comfortable about authorizing the search warrant. And after the search warrant is served, the officer must return the warrant and a report to the judge, even if they don't find anything.

All of this scrutiny and review teaches cops to make sure the search warrants they submit are accurate and that they don't get the wrong address. No officer who wants to continue his career wants to have to go back to a judge and tell them they got the wrong address or made some other mistake. As you might guess, making one mistake will have a severely negative effect upon you (as an officer) being able to get any additional search warrants signed by a judge. That judge is always going to have some question in his/her mind and they will microscope any search warrant you submit to them in the future.

[BigTiny]

I had a favorite judge who I took most of my warrants. He was the one everyone else avoided because he never did the "rubber stamp". He had a reputation for being meticulous, and I never had a warrant thrown out in motions. The two bad warrants I wound up with were the result of serving another task force's warrant and the other was from a snitch that was foisted upon us by our rank. I worked in the most violent city in America, and we were busy with warrants. We served on average 8 per week, with some special weeks where we would serve that many in a day. When you work with that volume, mistakes are going to happen.

[vc1111]

Cal, you said it better than I did. As Tiny pointed out search warrants are commonplace. We only hear about the screwups and those are obviously rare.